Dominique Strauss-Kahn will come face-to-face with a French woman who has accused him of trying to rape her, a Paris court said on Friday, in a confrontation procedure that will be part of a preliminary police inquiry into her complaint.
The meeting will throw attention back onto an inquiry that Strauss-Kahn hopes will come to nothing as he tries to recover from a New York sex scandal that derailed his IMF career and wrecked his chances of running for French president next year.
The court said a meeting would be held with Strauss-Kahn and his accuser Tristane Banon present so that investigators could compare their versions of an incident in a Paris apartment in 2003, when she says he tried to rape her. It did not say when the meeting would take place.
The former International Monetary Fund chief, who has already been questioned by French police and denies Banon’s accusations, would be “available at the court’s request”, his lawyer said.
